Making a Deal
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Sequel to “Meet Kenpachi” Ikkaku makes a decision.


**Title:** Making a Deal  
**Author:** Celeste  
**Universe:** Bleach   
**Theme/Topic:** Parallel piece to "Sealiing the Deal"  
**Rating:** PG-15  
**Pairing:** IkkakuxKira, ShuuheixYumichika  
**Warning/s:** Spoilers for the whole Soul Society Arc. Plus stupidity and OOCness  
**Word Count: **2,467  
**Time:** 1.37 hours  
**Summary:** Sequel to "Meet Kenpachi"- Ikkaku makes a decision.  
**Dedication:** antiparallel- because I am trying to be nicer to Kira, I am. Just not with Gin. XD  
**A/N: **SPEED WRITING. I guess I felt competitive tonight after seeing all the stories coming out on my f-list? PLUS I DON'T HAVE CLASS TOMORROW UNTIL 2 YES. XD So I was productive and DIDN'T WRITE MY PAPER like I was supposed to. Oh well. --;;  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

When Ikkaku hauled a lolling Kira over his shoulder and announced that he was going to take "Taichou to bed now," the rest of the eleventh division hooted and hollered like he'd just said he was going to… 

He flushed. "Not like that, perverts!" he exclaimed, causing Yumichika to twitter and Shuuhei to snort beer and cough rather unbecomingly.

He glared at the ninth division couple for setting strange precedents in the eleventh before remembering himself and carrying Kira off because his captain was drowsily proclaiming that he wasn't drunk, just dizzy because the room had started spinning without warning him first.

Madarame sighed and hefted Kira as gently as possible, hoping that his new captain wouldn't throw up on him between here and the third division headquarters. As luck would have it—he would have danced if it wouldn't have inevitably led to the vomit he was avoiding in the first place—Kira simply continued to murmur aimlessly about whatever happened to strike his fancy at any given time.

Ikkaku nearly dropped him when the blonde frowned and said, "Taichou was never this nice when he carried me to bed," before laughing, sort of sounding half-joking and half depressed all at the same time.

Madarame didn't know how to respond to that, didn't really trust himself to because the thought of Ichimaru Gin doing anything to Kira just really pissed him off somehow. So he simply squeezed the blonde's legs a little as a gesture of wordless comfort and kept walking, because physical strain was the best way to deal with unreasonable anger.

Kira gave a fluttering sigh then, and hanging upside down, buried his nose into Ikkaku's back. "Ikkaku?"

"Hmmm?"

"Don't worry, okay? I'll be…I won't…"

The other shinigami blinked. "Won't… er… what?"

"Mmm…nothing. You smell nice."

Ikkaku felt his cheeks go pink and coughing a little, said, "You're drunk, taichou. I smell like beer'n smokes and the cake that Yachiru dumped in my lap."

"Okay," Kira murmured. "Ichimaru-taichou smelled like blood."

Madarame made a face. "Figures."

"He made me bleed ya know? Said I tasted good that way." Kira laughed a little. "Sometimes I miss him."

Ikkaku stopped walking. "What the hell're you talking about?" he asked, feeling angry and indignant and something else he wasn't sure he could quite place.

"Do you like sex?" Kira asked suddenly, not sounding like he was all there.

Ikkaku blamed it all on the alcohol and hoped that his captain was just pointlessly rambling and that his words didn't have any basis in reality at all.

"Er…sure," he responded after a moment of silence in which Kira seemed to be waiting for an answer.

"Me too."

Ikkaku felt his face flush again. "Okay."

"Didn't like the blood at first though," Kira posed thoughtfully.

The huh? Ikkaku decided that maybe it was time to put his captain down. And so he did, as gently as possible. He even braced the blonde when he stumbled a little, head spinning as he tried to get reoriented after being sort-of upside down and then having to go to right-side-up again in the time it took Ikkaku to bend down.

"Easy there, taichou," Ikkaku soothed, hands on either of Kira's shoulders. "Can you stand on your own now?" he posed after a moment.

"Yup!" Kira responded, face flushed from the alcohol he'd consumed though his eyes still somehow, remained sad looking.

Ikkaku let him go.

He managed to stand for a good twenty seconds before tipping forward with a little yelp. Madarame caught him before he could hit the pavement.

Kira sighed and tucked his head into the crook of the new vice-captain's neck. "Thanks."

Ikkaku was probably just as red as Kira at this point, though for different reasons. "No…no problem."

He felt Kira fist the edge of his gi, and the blonde's breaths fluttered into the opening there. He could feel them on his chest.

Taking a deep breath of his own and counting backwards from one hundred in odd numbers, Ikkaku reminded himself that he'd put Kira down because he'd had a question. And important one. "Er…Kira…"

"Mmm?" Izuru blinked up at him, eyes not quite focused.

""What didja mean just now… you know, 'bout blood and stuff?"

Kira patted his vice-captain's chest with his free hand. "Sex, silly."

Ikkaku didn't get it. "And?"

"I didn't like it at first, 's all." Then the blonde gave a goofy smile. "But I do now, I think. Even the parts that hurt."

Ikkaku swallowed.

He was beginning to get it now, and he didn't like it at all. He didn't know what to say.

"But Ichimaru-taichou said I'd get used to it. And I did. He said I tasted good."

Ikkaku felt a little sick in his stomach and unconsciously tightened the hold he had around Kira's waist. A part of his mind registered that it was a nice one, slim and strong and arched just the right way—no wonder Gin had been so fond of the blonde. "So you think…"

Kira felt warm and sighed again, right where Ikkaku could feel it on his skin. "If I asked you to… would you…"

"No," Ikkaku immediately responded. "I wouldn't." _Not like that_ was what he really wanted to say, but it got stuck in his throat and he only ended up holding Izuru a little more tightly instead.

"Oh. Okay. Sorry." Kira sounded sad.

Ikkaku sighed. "Goddammit," he muttered, reaching to pet his captain's hair. "Don't sound like that, Kira, I mean it."

"Sokay. I understand."

Madarame's heart squeezed in his chest enough to cause physical pain. Grunting, he managed to say, "You're drunk, Kira. Nona this'll mean anything in the morning. Probably won't even remember it, 'kay?"

"'Kay."

They stood like that for a moment and Ikkaku wished Kira would stop breathing all warm and shaky on his chest like that. "Er…"

"Go now?"

"Yeah."

Kira held out his arms and gave a little sigh. "Upsy-daisy."

Ikkaku opted to carry him differently this time and bent to scoop him up behind the shoulders and knees. "Yeah. Here we go again."

They got back to the third division buildings without much incident after that, the blonde looking both tipsy and pensive and somehow, lonely even with Ikkaku right there with him in his bedroom.

The bald death god helped his captain into bed and tried not to feel like a big pervert when he helped the drunk blonde remove his uniform.

He noticed several small, sharpish looking scars up and down his captain's back and felt his jaw tense when he thought about what they might have meant given what he'd discovered tonight. He tried not to touch them, but when he did, Kira gave a small, breathy shudder and murmured Gin's name, half-asleep already and wanting something that wasn't right, not like that.

Ikkaku tucked him in and set a wastebasket by the side of the bed for morning. He felt weak standing at his captain's bedside, and wondered if this was what Shuuhei might have felt like some time before, when he was being barraged relentlessly by Yumichika and not knowing exactly, how to respond.

He wasn't sure if he liked the feeling as a whole, though he was almost certain as he stood watching Kira sleep and whispering that bastard's name as he did, that it wasn't something you could really help.

He sighed and took a seat beside the blonde's bedside, thinking that it'd only been a few goddamn weeks.

You weren't supposed to be able to feel like this in just a few goddamn weeks.

Well. There was no turning back now, he supposed.

* * *

When Kira woke up the next morning it was with a vague, pounding ache in the back of his head. But that was all, and he prided himself on not having to use the wastebasket that had mysteriously materialized by the side of his bed. 

"Mornin', taichou."

The blonde nearly leapt up at the sound of another voice in his bedroom, and looking up sharply, locked eyes with his vice-captain, who sat curled up in one of his chairs, staring intently at him.

So last night hadn't been a dream after all.

Kira felt his heart tighten in his chest. "M-morning," he stammered, looking away and wanting to just bury himself all the way into the covers and not come out until Ikkaku had left.

There was silence between them for a moment and Kira allowed himself the small hope of believing that maybe Ikkaku would stop being so straightforward for once and perhaps allow Izuru to forget what had happened last night, given that he couldn't quite remember all of it.

Just the embarrassing parts, really.

"So about last night…"

Kira felt his hope shatter all around him the moment Ikkaku opened his mouth and realized that maybe it had been foolish of him to expect Madarame to be anything but completely honest. It was a characteristic he'd highly valued in his vice-captain, after all.

"Y-yes?"

"Last night, you totally hit on me."

Kira's face flushed. "I… was drunk?"

"So you remember?"

The thing about Madarame's honesty was that it was the kind you couldn't lie to either, no matter how much you might want to. "…yes. Mostly."

Kira's shame was palpable.

"Cool."

He looked up. "Eh?"

"I said cool. That you remember."

"Oh."

Ikkaku scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck. "You were drunk."

"y-yes."

"Would you do it again? You know, if you were sober?"

For a moment, Kira didn't know how to respond because that generally wasn't the type of question a sane person would ask out of the blue like that.

Ikkaku looked back at him levelly and waited for a response.

Kira felt himself turning pink all the way up to his ears and looked down at the bedcovers intently. He opened his mouth. Closed it again. "I…"

"You don't gotta answer right away, I guess," Ikkaku opted on seeing Kira's distress, still weak to those eyes though he'd had the entire night to try and steel himself for this conversation.

It was a supreme relief to be given that option, because Kira didn't know the answer himself. It wasn't like he'd had any time to think about it seriously after all, and what had happened was while he was drunk and wasn't thinking, and if that hadn't been difficult enough, Ikkaku's hands had been warm and gentle last night, his voice, loud and clear and true in Kira's ears even when the rest of the world had felt muddled and sort-of lonely.

Lonely enough that he wouldn't have minded bleeding last night, if it meant that there was still someone out there other than Ichimaru willing to reach out for him.

He looked at Ikkaku then, feeling strange. "You said you didn't…"

"Yeah. I didn't," Ikkaku responded honestly.

Kira's chest started to ache some more. "I…" he felt helpless all over again, like he did all those time Ichimaru told him to smile and be a good boy, to behave and everything would be okay because taichou would take care of it for his cute little Kira-chan.

Just when things felt like they were beginning to change, Izuru discovered that he was still stuck in the same place while everything moved all around him.

He didn't like that feeling, not anymore. He didn't want to always be stuck alone with only the memory of his captain's hands squeezing his throat when he thought the way Ikkaku had carried him last night was somehow, much nicer, if farther away.

"…yes."

Ikkaku blinked at the sudden, whispered words and leaned forward to hear better. "What was that?"

"Yes. I… if you wanted to I would…"

The bald shinigami's eyes widened fractionally. He hadn't been expecting that. At least, not so quickly. "Oh."

Kira hid his face in his hands. "If you… wanted… me, I would ask you again."

Ikkaku leaned back in the chair, looking troubled. "Oh," he repeated, never really eloquent but always honest. "I see."

They sat in silence for a little longer.

And then, as if remembering something else, Ikkaku wrinkled his nose a little. "About the blood…"

Kira flinched. "That too, if you wanted," he said, quicker than he should have but not really caring anyway.

Ikkaku flinched back. "No! I wouldn't! That's what I meant, you know," he started, growing indignant. "That's fucked up."

"Why?"

Ikkaku palmed his forehead. "Geez, you don't know anything, do you?"

Kira didn't understand. "Eh?"

"The blood, stupid," Ikkaku pointed out. "I saw your scars last night, you know."

Izuru flushed again, and pulled the covers back up to his chin. "I…"

"'S not right. Pisses me off," Ikkaku continued, sliding off of his chair and onto the edge of the mattress. "Specially because you think 's how it's supposed to be."

"You mean it's…not?"

"What'd Ichimaru _tell_ you?"

Kira looked away. "Love is pain. It's willing to do anything for someone else. It hurts," he recited, voice small because the words that he used to revere from his precious captain were even beginning to sound a little insubstantial in his own ears. Small and weak against the onslaught of Ikkaku's loud declarations.

"I oughta shake you," Madarame muttered, feeling helpless. "Of course it hurts but it doesn't _have_ to, stupid. Not all the time."

"N-no?"

Ikkaku felt some of his bluster die at the face Kira was giving him—those _eyes_ goddammit—and sighing, he pulled up the bedcovers before very unceremoniously sliding in next to his captain.

Kira froze and didn't know what to do next.

"Relax," Ikkaku murmured, pulling Izuru up into his arms and tucking the blonde's head under his chin, just like last night. "You were drunk last night and your breath probably stinks like hell. Plus, I'm bushed."

Kira wasn't quite sure he understood what all those things had to do with one another, but he did know that his heart was beating fast as a rabbit's in his chest and Ikkaku could probably feel it, close as they were.

"What I mean," Ikkaku started, when Kira still wouldn't relax against him, "is that I am going to make you _scream_ later, and in all the good ways. Show you how it should be, okay? But I'm too damn tired right now 'cuz I didn't get any rest watching your sorry ass sleep all night." He pressed a kiss to the top of the blonde's head to cushion some of the blow from his words. "So humor me'n and give a guy a couple hours rest, wouldja?"

Oh.

Kira's heart still wouldn't stop fluttering, but he swallowed and nodded shyly against Ikkaku's chest.

Madarame grunted in satisfaction. "Good."

A few minutes later, he was snoring next to Kira's ear.

**END**


End file.
